Running on Ketones

I thought I’ll blog about my ketogenic diet journey as I’m 7+weeks into it. It’s my current passion. I first came to know of the ketogenic diet in 2018 and its basis which is to eat fats and curb carbs. I thought that the idea is absurd, how can I possibly lose weight when I’m eating fats like lard and oil?

Fast forward to mid 2019. I am at the height of my weight, 57.2kg, so I thought it’s time that I’ll lose weight. I didn’t want to do the tasteless chicken breast and salad diet again and so I decided to try the ketogenic diet. I researched that the key idea of the ketogenic diet is to eat 20g of carbs a day. There is zero option to eat sugar, majority of fruits (fructose) or any flour and rice since they are high in carbs.

70% of this diet comes from fats and healthy oils like olive oil and coconut oil, ghee and butter. Say goodbye to unhealthy vegetable oil and corn oil alike. Protein is about 20% of the keto diet. This concept is known as counting your macros. Notice how I didn’t write anything about calories.

The very next day after researching about keto, I went out to the supermarket to buy keto groceries like spinach, butterhead lettuce, asparagus, bacon, eggs, chicken thigh, pork belly, salmon, whipped cream, Kerrygold grass fed butter, raspberries and avocados. My first keto meal was a simple one. I cooked up 2 eggs, 2 slices of bacon, 1 avocado and some spinach. For dinner, I had a handful of raspberries with whipped cream (for the fats).

I weighed myself the next day and lo and behold, my weight dropped 1kg to 56.2kg. This is the motivation that kept me eating like this till now ’cause we got to admit it, who doesn’t like instant results.

Eating keto can be cheaper if you stick to the above grocery list as when I first started. However, if you wish to try fancy keto which means buying coconut yogurt, chia seeds, almond milk, almond nuts, almond only almond butter, peanuts only peanut butter, coconut flour, almond flour, cocoa powder, shirataki noodles, MCT oil, basically the can or packaged stuff, then the diet becomes expensive.

Simple keto works as long as you are counting your macros (use apps like myfitnesspal to keep track) so there is no need to dip deep into fancy keto unless you are passionate about this diet. I buy my keto groceries from Cold Storage, NTUC Finest, Mohota and Honest Bee supermarket.

My take away from this diet besides the weight that I lost (-6.8kg as of 13/8/19) is that sugar is the no. 1 source that makes us unhealthy and gain weight.

No wonder the government started targeting sugar back in April 2016. Sugar is found blatantly or hidden in a massive amount of food that we consume. Do you know that the majority of sauces like chilli sauce contain sugar? Bubble tea is a no brainer as to how much sugar it contains. Processed foods usually contain sugar. After cutting sugar from my diet, I started to appreciate food in their natural state. Give me some vegetable toasted in olive oil or butter and some grilled meat and I’m good to go.